NVIDIA's new GTX 280 graphics cards have just been released. Point of View's GeForce GTX 280 is an implementation of the NVIDIA reference design. The GTX 280 offers amazing performance improvements and can even beat the GeForce 9800 GX2. But performance comes at a cost, at $649 you need a fat wallet to be able to afford this card.

These cards are beasts. Beating the 9800GX2 with a single GPU is no simple feat, I have to give nVidia credit for that. But the price take is insane. I only hope this drops the price on the older cards.

I am glad I read every little bit of W1zzard's review cuz his "$2000 e-penis" remark had me lol-ing big time and I think that's exactly what this card (3 of em in Tri-SLI) is all about at that price tag (for most of us anyways).

CUDA...is Compute Unified Device Architecture. It's a computing architecture, like ARM, SPARC, PPC, or even x86 for that matter, just that it's not (yet) a full-fledged machine architecture. You can code applications for CUDA ranging from F@H to the PhysX process, prettymuch anything that can exploit a CUDA supportive GPU and make use of those 100's of GFLOPs (GeForce 8 series and upwards). How do you make the most out of NVidia's shaders, they being 'fully programmable'? By coding applications based on that architecture. Just as you can create Itanium apps on a x86 machine by using the right IDE, you can code CUDA apps. They basically remade PhysX for GeForce by making it a CUDA app. So the software basically makes the shaders do physics calculations which the PhysX PPU used to do.

Some people might even get three of them just to be number one in the benchmark competitions again. Even if you won't make number one you can still say you have a $2000 e-penis.

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Thanks for being brave enough to say that in the final review!

1.4 billion transistors -- damn. That's a mean piece of technology. And it's good to see that nvidia's finally made something that will completely unseat the 8800 GTX, but damn does it eat up the watts!

Impressive scores and alot different than the links to Toms Hardware and Anandtech show. I like the cooling solution, quietness and performance. Im not a fan of connecting the sound to on board or Soundcard. ATI builds their own DSP (Im assuming its a DSP) into their card. I see it stacking up well to the 9800GX2 and barely losing in a couple of benchmarks to it. Biggest thing is, at full high settings, it runs Crysis over 30 FPS. Amazing. Price is waaay too high though. Im so interested in seeing ATIs HD4870 now.

I havent read the Zotac review but its been tops in everything on the benches. Im guessing its OC;d or something. Also, Ive noticed on every review, W1zz has 100% in the price perf part for the card being reviewed while others are less or more.

Flat out stupid price I cannot believe how dumb this card is at this price unless NV just wanted to be king of the hill and only made these to sell their lower cards. Like the the 9800gtx. It would have made better sense to make a 8800gtx2 or 9600gtx2 but what the heck is this price. Why would you buy this when you can buy a 9800gx2 for as low as 400.00 and only lose a few frames. They couldn't come with anything better than this.

If I were to go out to get a card right now I would get a 9800 GX2 and hope I could clock it up enough to get the 5-15 frames it lost to the 280. I could not beat a 280 overclocked but I would have an extra $280 to comfort me about that.

You know, it's something about that -- as well as the extremely hard to open case -- that says to me that nVidia REALLY doesn't want you doing custom things to this card. I mean, I know a lot of companies are like that, but it's really evident with this card.

Flat out stupid price I cannot believe how dumb this card is at this price unless NV just wanted to be king of the hill and only made these to sell their lower cards. Like the the 9800gtx. It would have made better sense to make a 8800gtx2 or 9600gtx2 but what the heck is this price. Why would you buy this when you can buy a 9800gx2 for as low as 400.00 and only lose a few frames. They couldn't come with anything better than this.

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Only lose a few frames? The GX2 loses way too many frames as it is, considering WHAT it is as a product. The lesser minimum frames from the 280 is astonishingly better than the GX2. And in other cases it's faster.

Almost twenty more FPS in Crysis at 1920 res WITH 4xAA, that's a sick jump for a single card solution. That just took it out of the 'tolerable' field into the 'consistent enjoyment' ballpark altogether.

And I can get the 280 for less than four hundred and fifty GBP including VAT, you just have to know where to shop. At that price, I'd be willing to buy it outright, rather than wait on the que for EVGA's Step Up.